The toponymical palimpsest: renaming as a symbolic (re)construction of space and place

Abstract

Theoretical approaches to renaming as present within critical toponymy and cultural geography are described in the article. The critical approach presumes neglecting the traditional etymological studies and considers toponymy as a reflection and a projection of certain social processes. A geographical approach to the social meanings of renamed places is suggested to develop this paradigm by means of explaining the multiplicity of a place. The place itself as a notion, a center of human meanings and a starting point of the unite world view is used as a domain for the suggested approach. The critical geographical paradigm is combined with the representational approaches typical for new cultural and humanistic geography in order to create a stereoscopical vision of a place through the multiplicity of its meanings, images, lived social practices and semiotic signs. Developing the notion of geoconceptualization of a place within its renaming a palimpsestic approach in toponymic studies is stated. Geoconcept are regarded not only as linked to certain place images and meanings, but also as a part of the process of the endless process of the new world views’ formation. The toponymical palimpsest reveals the multiplicity of renamed place as semiotic resignification thus turning a geoconcept into an intertext.

Metaphysical Portrait of Melitopol in the Symbolic Circle "Honey -Milk -Water"(The Problem of Symbolic Resources in Tourist Activities)

“…which in the process of historical development is transformed from a "single-layer" material landscape into a set of autonomous strata with a variable hierarchy, is called, after D. Meinig (Meinig, 1979), palimpsest (Greek παλίμψηστον, from πάλιν -meaning ovu and ψηστός -scraped (Latin. Codex rescriptus) -parchment on which the original text was erased and a new one was written on top of it) (Mitin, 2005). The metaphor of the palimpsest has proved to be extremely successful and is now widely used in a wide range of urban studies, including recent research by M. Lepsky in the pages of this journal (Lepsky, 2020).…”